Smart anything.

We love the smart revolution that’s happening over the last few years. It’s great to see the slew of new products that are bringing little bits of connected smartness to various devices and products that have always been dumb products. It’s a little haphazard at the moment however; with smart this and smart that coming out when it’s not entirely clear if it’s even necessary to have a particular smart product. “Smart” technology is finding it’s feet I guess and after a while it will probably become ubiquitous for products to be “Smart” and connected and they will no longer be referred to as Smart. They just will be.

Tables won’t be smart tables, they’ll just charge your personal devices and sync data and display metrics and record stats and offer personalised content for whoever is sitting at them. Car’s will become so smart that I can see steering wheels disappearing and we can expect scenes like in iRobot where cars tailgate autonomously in cavalcades along highways efficiently traveling at highspeed and ejecting individual cars when they need to get off for their destination. Drones will probably become every-day items and you’ll probably never have to walk your dog again, your drone will do it or some kind of “Smart” collar. Video after the break

Anyways, I’m rambling on a bit. I’m actually supposed to be writing about Knocki. A new smart device currently doing well on Kickstarter who’s purpose is to turn any object into a programmable smart device. Triggered by knocking patterns on an object with your hand Knocki can be programmed to recognise a slew of patterns and can detect knocking on surfaces such as doors, walls, tables, windows, etc. Their video envisages some useful scenarios such as notifying a homeowner if someone knows on the front door, knocking on your coffee table to turn on your media centre or pause or play Netflix. The product offers huge possibilities for uses kinda limited only by your imagination. It’s a good thing you can get these in a multipack as they would be great all over the house. Knock on your bedside table to reset your alarm or sleep in or a different pattern at night to lock all the doors and set the house alarm. Of course a lot of the good uses would require you to have lots of other smart or automated products around your house but nonetheless it would still introduce some simple smart house uses to get started.

We’re happy to see some smart smart products like this coming out at the moment with a target on more general usage instead of being for one really specific task that might not really justify the asking price. But for the price of $189 for triple pack of Knocki’s this seems like a great deal to get started adding some custom smart solutions to your home.